How to make Traveller more popular with TTRPG players
- Thread starter MarcusIII
- Start date
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
That is a really good chart! I'm going to use it from now on.
Softer than what? CT didn't even use stat modifiers on most tasks and then they were all over the place. Losing stats was bad, but in an amorphous and hard to quantify way.
Guns had a minimum Dex and a Bonus Dex, which varied between weapon types. So if you used a carbine and didn't have a Dex 5+, you took a -1. But if you used an Automatic Rifle and didn't have a Dex 7+, you took a -2. On the other end a Dex 9+ was +1 with a Carbine, but a Dex 10+ was needed to get a bonus with an Autorifle (bonus being +2).
Pilot rolls were straight pilot skill.
You needed a Dex of 8+ AND Medic 3 to be a licensed surgeon, but the Dex didn't actually modify your Medic rolls for the most part.
And SOC was especially wild because a high SOC might be a bonus in certain circumstances and a penalty in others.
Spenser TR
Mongoose
I love some of the points brought up here - how younger people might perceive the game and how younger characters can be at a disadvantage without some finagling. It led me (back) to thinking about resources for school gaming clubs (I feel like these still exist, yea?). It'd be great if there was a package for faculty members interested in doing that, if Mongoose made it easy for someone to start one of those clubs using Traveller.
Basic versions of the rules (like Explorer/Merchant), pregens galore, a subsector with interesting stuff, but also materials for the faculty member - predone permission docs (or ideas for wording), one page flyers, info sheets to generate interest, lots of imagery to get kids excited about the game. Some thinking about what kinds of content was appealing to younger/new players would go a long way, and having all this in a kit would be great.
I'm aware of the Starter Kit; something like that, but I'm thinking something way more targeted (and inexpensive) for this purpose, I guess.
Basic versions of the rules (like Explorer/Merchant), pregens galore, a subsector with interesting stuff, but also materials for the faculty member - predone permission docs (or ideas for wording), one page flyers, info sheets to generate interest, lots of imagery to get kids excited about the game. Some thinking about what kinds of content was appealing to younger/new players would go a long way, and having all this in a kit would be great.
I'm aware of the Starter Kit; something like that, but I'm thinking something way more targeted (and inexpensive) for this purpose, I guess.
IanBruntlett
Emperor Mongoose
When I get players to create a character, I give them 2 terms to do what they want with.
Either pre-career education + 1 term in a job or 2 terms in a job. Works OK so far.
Either pre-career education + 1 term in a job or 2 terms in a job. Works OK so far.
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
With my 13 year-old twins, when I've created characters with them we stop at 3 terms, but it's worked pretty well so far. We haven't done a long campaign yet, but we rolled up characters for PoD so I just need to actually read the campaign and we'll see how that goes. But for the short, free form games we've been playing, 2 or 3 terms works pretty well.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
You need to actively mitigate cellular degradation, in order to enjoy that pension.
Also, starting off at level/one allows more guidance for character (and characteristics) development, if balanced by a lifetime of work getting you full ownership of a forty year old free trader, that's falling apart.
Also, starting off at level/one allows more guidance for character (and characteristics) development, if balanced by a lifetime of work getting you full ownership of a forty year old free trader, that's falling apart.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Something I thought about was using the CT extended character generation system in Book 4 Mercenary etc. was starting everyone's character at 18 in their first term, and each year being a campaign.
Softer in that Mongoose players get to choose what stats lose a point (until it gets to one point from each). But also the CT rolls were harsher.
Mongoose at Term 4 is a single 2D6-4 roll, with no ageing on a roll of 5+, one lost point on a 4, two on a 3 and three on a 2.
Classic at Term 4 was three 2D6 rolls vs each of STR, Dex and End, losing a point if the throw was not made (8+ for STR and END, 7+ for Dex).
At the end of term 4 a mongoose character has an 83% chance of no loss, 11% chance of losing a point from the stat of their choice, 5.5% chance of losing a point from two stats of their choice, and 2.7% chance of losing a point from all three.
At the end of term 4 a classic character has a 58% chance of losing a point of Str, a separate 58% chance of losing a point of END, and a separate 41% chance losing a point of DEX. The chance of NO stat loss at age 34 in Classic is only 10%. The chance of losing a point from all three was 14%.
So, definitely harsher.
And I take the point that there was no FORMAL characteristic modifier in Classic, but the tasks were meant to take characteristics into account. Such as "DM+1 for STR 9+". Or the very relevant weapon charts. Losing stat points were very much important in Classic.
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Duke Dogwalker
Mongoose
I am confused. The original post explicitly called for 3rd party developers -- highlighted below.
Mindjammer is not the only example of a 3rd party creating a new setting for Traveller. Check out Darrin Drader's 2009 incarnation of Reign of Discordia using Mongoose Traveller rules.
It looks like Mongoose has been willing to license the rules for 3rd party settings, which is exactly what you asked for. Isn't it?
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Nope. I didn't ask Mongoose to license 3rd party settings.
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shirgall
Cosmic Mongoose
You didn't have to. The rules started separated from the setting, it's just that over time people associated Traveller with the Third Imperium instead of the Third Imperium with Traveller.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Which is why I didn't
"Over time" in this context really means "after 1981 or so". Although you can probably peg it to 1979 when Spinward Marches was published.
It's a straw man argument, or at least an obsolete one, that the CT Books 1-3 were generic; GDW only ever offered one setting - all the adventures and most of the supplements were set in the 3I (Citizens, Animal Encounters and 1001 Characters might be the only generic ones. 76 Patrons at a stretch, but it still ties things to 3I locations), and certainly by 1981 even the rules (Deluxe Traveller, followed by The Traveller Book in 1982, followed by Starter Traveller in 1983) came with a 3I adventure.
Four years of generic LBBs at most, followed by 44 years of rules with an attached setting.
A further thought I had regarding this... if the Traveller rules are so generic, why have aliens and robots always remained such extras? Surely a generic SF system should integrate non-humans better into the core rules? One of the attractions - and expectations - of fantasy RPGs are the non-human PCs. You don't need pages and pages of background for this - splatbooks can expand all that later. But some kid rocking up to 5e that wants to play a robot, or a devil, has a way. They definitely expect elves and dwarves.
Mongoose does at least include two aliens in the CRB. But they could do better. "I HAVE to play a Human... or a furry?"
Even in Charted Space there's meant to be all sorts of minor aliens kicking around the spaceways, but most people are going to be thinking Star Wars cantina or Guardians of the Galaxy. You could vastly improve the CRB by adding two or three pages for a playable creature maker - and let it cover cyborgs, synthetics and robots. Alien cyborgs. Robot cats. Uplifts. Hybrids. Integrate it with the animal section and you might not even need to change the page count. The rules even exit for the synthetics - you just need a simplified subset of RHB rules.
Any simple alien maker rules could later feed into a full sourcebook product (almost inevitably called Alien Handbook).
It's a straw man argument, or at least an obsolete one, that the CT Books 1-3 were generic; GDW only ever offered one setting - all the adventures and most of the supplements were set in the 3I (Citizens, Animal Encounters and 1001 Characters might be the only generic ones. 76 Patrons at a stretch, but it still ties things to 3I locations), and certainly by 1981 even the rules (Deluxe Traveller, followed by The Traveller Book in 1982, followed by Starter Traveller in 1983) came with a 3I adventure.
Four years of generic LBBs at most, followed by 44 years of rules with an attached setting.
A further thought I had regarding this... if the Traveller rules are so generic, why have aliens and robots always remained such extras? Surely a generic SF system should integrate non-humans better into the core rules? One of the attractions - and expectations - of fantasy RPGs are the non-human PCs. You don't need pages and pages of background for this - splatbooks can expand all that later. But some kid rocking up to 5e that wants to play a robot, or a devil, has a way. They definitely expect elves and dwarves.
Mongoose does at least include two aliens in the CRB. But they could do better. "I HAVE to play a Human... or a furry?"
Even in Charted Space there's meant to be all sorts of minor aliens kicking around the spaceways, but most people are going to be thinking Star Wars cantina or Guardians of the Galaxy. You could vastly improve the CRB by adding two or three pages for a playable creature maker - and let it cover cyborgs, synthetics and robots. Alien cyborgs. Robot cats. Uplifts. Hybrids. Integrate it with the animal section and you might not even need to change the page count. The rules even exit for the synthetics - you just need a simplified subset of RHB rules.
Any simple alien maker rules could later feed into a full sourcebook product (almost inevitably called Alien Handbook).
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MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Yes, CT Book One Char Gen had the 3I nobility level structure built into the Soc stat. That is setting specific.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Excellent points. Lots of work to be done on the Core Rules
Another thought is that while it's good game design to avoid a Mary Sue character type, there's no particular need to have total balance across character types in Traveller either. You probably would design critters with a points budget to keep a lid on the former, but it won't matter if you end up with some aliens that are stat poor and others stat heavy. We already have that with Bwaps and Aslan, and I've never seen it cause any issues. Traveller characters end up asymmetrical anyway, unless a group is using an alternate character generation system.
It's more important to have aliens and other non-humans with strengths and weaknesses compared to Humans for interesting and plot generating reasons.
It's more important to have aliens and other non-humans with strengths and weaknesses compared to Humans for interesting and plot generating reasons.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
So I was reading reddit, and I looked at a couple of threads about Traveller. One of the commenters on a thread said he liked the adventures but that the 3I setting was boring. I considered that, and then I realized that this person was someone who would never sandbox, who would never create his own setting, and who would never see the adventure potential inherent in the Spinward Marches. He was a person who would never think about the conflicts in the setting and derive his own adventures from them. Giving such people a toolbox for creating any science fiction adventure they want is like giving them Visual Studio IDE that can make any game they want, when all they want to do is play Counterstrike.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
I disagree.
It had a nobility rank structure that was common in many of the books Traveller was inspired by, the Imperium just so happens to have used it.
You could say the same about the jump drive, again there are many novels that use some form of jump drive. Not everything that is in the 77 rules made it into the setting.
